


A Different Kind of Happy Ending

by alanasarahmaxwell (eyemoji)



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Don't Let Goddard Futuristics Raise Children, Eiffel's not dead but Anne thinks he is, So within the conceit of the story he is, Well - Freeform, ch2: implied character death, chapter one has a happy ending so if you don't like pain you can stop there, happy-ish, it's quasi-cute, poor kate she doesn't get the appreciation she deserves tbh, scriptfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 06:03:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11330010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyemoji/pseuds/alanasarahmaxwell
Summary: Anne Garcia writes letters to her dad. Simultaneously, Goddard takes an interest.





	1. Happy

**Author's Note:**

> I love Anne Garcia so much it's not funny ANYWAYS ao3 is shit for posting scriptfic so you can read it formatted here: https://WriterDuet.com/script#NR8FC_4TXRP58FVSCAH | hmu on tumblr @justasmalltownai

 

**CANAVERAL**

 

We hear the sound of a tape recorder being TURNED ON. It starts to play back whatever is recorded on it.

* * *

**GARCÍA HOME, SOMEWHERE, TEXAS**

 

_Anne is five, and just home from school. She is sitting at the dining table, her legs swinging freely. Every time she swings particularly hard, her chair CREEEAKS. She's writing a letter. In crayon._

_When we hear Anne's voice, what we're really hearing is her letter._

 

ANNE

Dear daddy, how are you? Happy dad day Mamá let me letter you 'n say hi 'n stuff. I am using pink, 'cause it is my second favorite, and mamá says yellow is too hard to see. It is still my favorite though. Do you like yellow?

 

_In the background, we hear the creak of A DOOR OPENING. We hear footsteps, sharp against the ground. They belong to shoes that clearly do not belong anywhere near dirt. Sucks._

_The following conversation takes place in the background as Anne doodles something with the yellow crayon on her letter:_

 

KATE

Hello? Can I help yo- oh hi! Miss Young, I didn't see you there. And you must be--?

 

CUTTER

Marcus Cutter. But please, call me Marcus.

 

_His smile is evident in his voice._

 

KATE

(a little overwhelmed)

Oh- well- Miss Young, Mr Cutter- _Marcus_ , please, come in.

 

_Back to Anne, speaking over the sounds of Cutter and Rachel settling in:_

 

ANNE

The scary lady just came in. She is mamá's friend. She says she does not like kids, but mamá says no one can not like me. Do I get to be an adult now? I told mamá that when I grow up I wanna be just like her, sorry dad it is okay though I am going to come visit you.

 

_Rachel steps through into the kitchen, her stride noticeably different without the clack of her heels._

 

RACHEL

Oh, it's you. Anne, right?

 

ANNE

The scary lady is looking at me and also she says not to call her the scary lady she says my name is Rachel but my name is Anne.

(pause )

Now she says stop writing ev- evr- evrythink she is saying but I wanna be a news write person like Mr K. Mr K is nice.

(pause )

Scary lady wants to know who Mr K is but I am not telling her because Mr K is too nice.

 

_We once again hear footsteps, this time shoe-less, as Kate and Cutter also enter the kitchen. Their voices carry across the distance:_

 

KATE

Really, Mr Cutter, that's too kind of you-

 

CUTTER 

I know.

 

KATE

-And of Goddard Futuristics-

 

CUTTER

I know.

 

KATE

-but I can't accept.

 

_Cutter doesn't react, merely quirks an eyebrow._

 

KATE

You see, Anne's only five, and with Doug out of the picture, I'd really prefer Anne to grow up with at least one functional parent.

(softer)

She deserves at least that.

 

CUTTER 

Oh, I couldn't agree more.

 

KATE

You- couldn't?

 

RACHEL

Of course.

 

_Kate nearly jumps. She'd forgotten they were now in the same room as Rachel. And Anne._

_Rachel sees Kate's nervous look at Anne._

 

RACHEL

Oh don't worry. You can say what you'd like; she won't hear. I made sure of that.

 

_She holds out her palm, within which lie two yellow hearing aids._

 

RACHEL

It was scary lady this and scary lady that until she just couldn't take any more of the scary lady saying anything, I guess.

 

_She shrugs._

 

RACHEL

No harm done. Now, let's get down to business?

 

CUTTER 

Perfect. Now, as I was about to say, I totally agree with you. All this corporate nonsense can't stand for half a second in the face of a _mother_ , right? Anne needs a guiding figure in her life, someone who can teach her the rights and wrongs of the world- and if we're lucky, she'll turn out much better than her father. And at the same time, with all due respect, Miss García, you can't give her all that on your own. Not while keeping this family alive.

 

KATE 

I've been doing just fine so far, thank you.

 

_Cutter tsks._

 

CUTTER

Now, Miss García, use a little of your imagination. Think about it. Anne here's hearing aids for example-

 

KATE

(startled)

The insurance covers-

 

CUTTER

_Our_ insurance covers.

 

KATE

But-

 

RACHEL

Kate, please; we both know you're smarter than Mr Eiffel about things like this.

 

KATE

You know Doug?

 

CUTTER

I was just getting to that. You see, speaking of our Dougie boy, he's just been offered a very, very attractive position.

 

_Kate nods her head slowly._

 

KATE

By you.

 

CUTTER

By us.

 

KATE

And...

 

CUTTER

(brightly)

And that offer comes with...certain benefits.

(pause)

In fact, our Doug was _especially_ insistent that we have this little chat. If it weren't for him, the two of us

 

_He indicates himself and Rachel._

 

CUTTER

Wouldn't be here at all.

 

KATE

I...

(with a burst of anger)

Don't call him "our" Doug. Just because we had a kid doesn't mean I have some kind of claim on him. And I don't want one. And as for you-

 

_She's cut off by Cutter's laugh._

 

CUTTER

(basically wiping tears from his eyes at this point)

Oh, no no no no. Though, I must admit, cute, you were never part of this. No, when I said "our," I was referring solely to Douglas Eiffel as belonging to Goddard Futuristics Ltd and all its associated subsidies and yaddi yaddi yada.

 

KATE

That sounds like-- you don't _own_ him.

 

_Cutter just keeps on smiling as he indicates to Rachel to hand over a file. She PASSES it to Kate._

 

RACHEL

Someone's a little out of date. Here's a... fact check.

 

CUTTER

I'm sure you'll find all the necessary information within those papers. 

 

_Kate opens it and begins SHUFFLING through the papers. Cutter GETS UP to leave and Rachel FOLLOWS him._

 

CUTTER

Have a wonderful day, Kate.

 

_He steps outside. Rachel lingers._

 

RACHEL

You know, you'll say yes, eventually.

 

_Kate looks up from the file to stare at her._

 

KATE

You can't say that.

 

RACHEL

(chiding)

Enough with all the "you can't"s and "you don't"s. You've seen the file. How much more proof do you need?

 

KATE

So you have legal control of my ex-boyfriend's life. That doesn't automatically extend to me. Or my daughter.

 

RACHEL

Who said anything about legal?

 

_Pause as she bends down to hand Anne her hearing aids back._

 

RACHEL

(over her shoulder)

Mr Cutter has a way about these things.

 

_She leaves. The door CLOSES behind her._

_Beat._

 

ANNE

Mamá, what was scary lady and the man talking about?

 

_Kate strokes her daughter's hair, but she's not really in the moment. Her mind is millions of miles away trying to figure out the exact depth of the situation she's in._

 

KATE

Nothing important, _chiquita._ Nothing important.

* * *

 

**GARCÍA HOME, SOMEWHERE, TEXAS**

 

_Anne is back at the same table, but her legs don't swing as high. In fact, if she stretches, she can hit the floor. She is seven._

 

ANNE

Dear daddy, it was my birthday yesterday. I'm seven now, and I learned contractions! I'm, it's, he's, she's, can't, won't, don't, mightn't, y'all. I'm not allowed to use the last one in writing, so don't tell Mrs McLeary! Even though everyone says it.

 

KATE

(in the background)

Anne! Did you pack?

 

ANNE

I leave tomorrow. I'm going to space camp! Except I don't actually get to go to space, it's just pretend.

 

KATE

Anne!

 

ANNE

I don't really wanna go. It's fake space! But Mamá says I have to.

 

KATE

Anne! You have to be ready tonight! Mr Cutter will have my head if you're late!

 

ANNE

One good thing is that I got a sleeping bag! It's yellow! It's perfect.

 

KATE

Chiquita! Time to go to bed! You have a big day tomorrow!

 

ANNE

Okay I have to go now I'll finish this tomorrow morning.

 

_Beat._

 

ANNE

(excited)

Okay, so Mamá says Mr Cutter says if I do good in space camp, then I get to stay in Florida! With Disney! So maybe I will try hard. Mamá says I should, and if I get picked, I can go to Disney!

 

_We hear the sound of a door opening._

 

ANNE

Okay I have to go now bye!

* * *

 

**GODDARD JUNIOR TRAINING PROGRAM, CAPE CANAVERAL**

 

_Anne is eleven._

 

ANNE

Dear daddy, Disney was fun the first hundred times, but I'm _so_ over Florida. Please come and save me. There's so much math, and I'm not supposed to like math, apparently, even though I kind of do, but that's not the point- it's boring. It's the same thing over and over again, and I'm _bored_. Can you come get me and we can go ice skating?

 

_The door to her dorm opens and a bunch of kids file in._

 

KID 1

Hey, García, whatcha doing?

 

_Anne ignores the kid._

 

KID 1

Hey García, _whatcha doing_?

 

_Anne continues to ignore the kid._

 

KID 1

_Hey García, whatcha-_

 

ANNE

(snapping)

Writing a letter.

 

KID 1

Jeez, you don't have to be like that.

 

ANNE

If I told you I didn't have my hearing aids in, will you leave me alone?

 

KID 1

Um, they're right there, I can see them.

 

ANNE

Really? What about now?

 

KID 1

(duh)

_Yeah,_ they're still there.

 

ANNE

Come closer.

 

KID 1

They're still right there, I can-

 

_Anne swings around and punches him._

 

KID 1

(in pain)

What the _heck_! I was just asking a _question!_

 

_Anne ignores him and goes back to her writing._

 

KID 1

Guys, look what she did! She _punched_ me!

 

KID 2

Does it hurt?

 

KID 3

You should tell someone.

 

_Anne ignores all of them._

_Eventually two pairs of footsteps come rushing into the room, one clipped and stern, and vaguely familiar. The other is a nurse of some sort._

 

NURSE

(to Kid 1)

Are you alright? Let me take a look.

 

_As Kid 1 begins complaining in the background to the Nurse, Rachel Young sizes up Anne. She doesn't look mad, just mildly irritated, and that's her usual look. If Anne didn't know any better, she might have said she caught a hint of approval._

 

RACHEL

Come with me.

 

_Rachel doesn't mince words, and Anne jumps to follow, more out of curiosity than fear. In the background, the other kids whisper about her._

 

KID 2

Where do you think she's going?

 

KID 3

Is she going to get in trouble?

 

KID 1

(muffled by tissues)

I bet she gets kicked out.

 

_Their voices fade out into the distance as Anne and Rachel walk down the hall._

 

ANNE

Where are we going?

 

_Rachel doesn't answer. Anne doesn't bother asking again. After all, she knows where that kind of questioning leads. Eventually, Rachel stops and opens a door._

 

RACHEL

Mr Cutter, as requested.

(to Anne:)

Go in. Don't lie. Don't hide anything.

 

_Anne walks inside. The door closes behind her._

 

CUTTER

Anne García! Just the girl I was looking for. Have a seat.

 

_Anne does not move._

 

ANNE

Am I getting kicked out?

 

CUTTER

Not unless you can't listen. Have a seat.

 

_Anne sits._

 

CUTTER

Do you have any idea what this about?

 

ANNE

Me...punching someone?

 

CUTTER

No. That was just...convenient.

 

ANNE

(under her breath)

He deserved it.

 

_Cutter leans forward in his chair, his signature smile appearing. But it's not necessarily directed at her..._

 

CUTTER

I'm sure he did.

 

_Anne makes a startled noise. She wasn't expecting him to catch that or for him to agree. What kind of adult **is** Cutter?!_

 

CUTTER

Now, to business. I hear you've been doing very well in...

 

_Cutter's voice fades out as we are removed from the scene._

* * *

 

**GODDARD JUNIOR TRAINING PROGRAM, CAPE CANAVERAL**

 

_Anne is fifteen, and the mood is dramatically darker._

 

ANNE

Hey, dad.

 

_She sounds tired, resigned._

 

ANNE

How's it going? Up in space? With all the other people? Lieutenant-Commander Reneé Minkowski? Doctor Alexander Hilbert? That cool AI thing?

 

_She sighs._

 

ANNE

What a joke. I don't even know why I pretend anymore.

 

_Beat._

 

ANNE

I know now. I know you're dead. I know you died years ago, long before my first letter, and I know you weren't in that jail as long as you were supposed to be.

(pause)

I wrote you every year, did you know that? I wrote you from when I started being able to write enough to be understandable. I wrote you when I was five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, not eleven, technically, because I tore it up, but I _did_ write it; twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and now, fifteen. Ten years of letters, dad, ten years of letters you never once saw a word of.

(pause)

I can fly a plane now, did you know that? I fly faster and better than the best of them, to the point where Mom started addressing everything to me as _conejito_ , not _chiquita_. I guess I'm not that little anymore anyways.

(pause)

I wish I could fly up to you. With my hearing aids in, I'm the best pilot in my class, but I bet I could fly better with them out. Maybe if I didn't have to hear the laws of physics coming true all around me, I could ignore them and fly backwards through time, meet you, for real. Tell you it's alright, and that you're going to be fine, even though I know that's not true. I wish- I wish you had the chance to do that for me.

 

_Beat._

_Anne starts to say something, then stops herself._

 

ANNE

What was that Rachel once said? The day I was _sure_ I was getting kicked out, when I realized, as boring as it was, I didn't want to go back home? Now I'm not sure if I ever will, what with Goddard's track record. _Don't lie. Don't hide anything_. What absolute _bullshit_. They're the ones who've been hiding things all along. They've been lying to me from the start. And you know what? So has _Mom_. She's not my Mamá anymore. Maybe she never really was.

(pause)

I don't think she knows I know. Or at least, that's what she tells herself. I've been hinting at it when I email her, and I haven't actually vocally spoken to her since my fourteenth birthday, but...

(she sighs)

I don't know. It's so easy to think you know everything when everyone tells you how smart you are. That's what happened to me. That's how they got me. Everything Anne García did was right. When I punched that kid, I should have been sent home. That's what would happen in any normal place. In fact, if I'd been anyone but your daughter, I probably _would_ have been kicked out. But instead, I was congratulated, promoted, so to say. Cutter let me complain about how bored I was, and then he upped the work. Got me working on increasingly more difficult projects, spending more and more of my time here in Florida, until I never went home, not even on holidays. I don't know when I realized I wasn't just doing practice problems anymore. I've been actively working for Goddard Futuristics for at least a year now, and I didn't know for most of it.

(pause)

I don't know what I want anymore.

I want home, I want my Mamá back, I want you, I want to make both of you proud, I want to do well, I want to be smart, I want to do smart things, I want to make a difference, I _am_ making a difference right now. And I can't tell where to draw the line between good and bad. Which one of these wants is the one stopping me from going home, from running away, from doing what's right? Who decides what's right? It's not Goddard, who sent you up to die. It's not Mamá, who conveniently failed to mention that for fifteen years of my life. It's not- me. Because I can't. Because I won't. I've read enough sci-fi to know that villains are made when they decide to apply their own moral codes to society.

 

_Pause. She takes a deep breath._

 

ANNE

So. Uh, I guess what I'm asking- and I know it's kind of dumb, I _know_ you can't hear me, that you scientifically don't exist anymore, but... can you be that person for me? Will you help me figure out what to do? Be my- I guess- my guardian angel, kind of? I mean, it'll give you back the chance to be my dad, in a way, right?

 

_Beat._

 

ANNE

That's- I know I just dumped a lot, but, uh, that's all I have for this year. Let me know what you think, okay?

 

_She gets up, clicks off the bedside light._

 

ANNE

Night, dad.

 

_The space between this section and the next section should be longer than usual._

* * *

 

**REDACTED, REDACTED.**

 

_Anne CLICKS something on. There's the TEAR of paper as she opens a bag of chips. She's definitely in a moving object of some sort._

 

ANNE

So, dad, it's been two years since the last time I "wrote" to you. And I've been thinking. A lot. About a lot of different things. But mostly, I keep coming back to that thing Rachel said: _Go in. Don't lie. Don't hide anything._ And I realized- when I wrote you last, I left out that first part. "Go in." Which, in hindsight, was a mistake. Go in. Go. In. It's an action. It moves forward. The others are all preceded by "don't." They hinder. And all these years, I've been hindering myself, too. I've been too scared to fall behind, to make a mistake, to push. I've forgotten how to _go_.

(pause)

And, uh, you know how I asked for your assistance two years ago? Thank you for all the insight I've gained from you- even though I've had to get it from files and pictures and the deep dark Internet instead of from you directly. Which isn't your fault. Your mission was set up to fail. But I'm on a mission of my own, now, and part of it involves making sure that something like that never happens again. No more Doug Eiffels. And no more Anne Garcías, either. We're the only ones.

(pause)

There's some solidarity in that, I think.

 

_Pause as she adjusts some of whatever equipment is around her._

 

ANNE

I've decided to live my life by those words, now. I don't think this is what Rachel foresaw when she said them, a renegade prodigy on the run from the company she's hunting. But then again, us Garcías have always been unpredictable.

 

_There's a smile in her voice when she says this last bit._

 

ANNE

We don't follow orders that don't feel right. We don't stay stuck in the present. And we _do_ look out for the rest of the world, even when the rest of the world doesn't seem to care about us. We don't lie to ourselves. We don't hide anything. And we _go_.


	2. (...Kind of)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an epilogue.

**CANAVERAL**

 

_The tape runs on empty for a bit; the Anne recordings seem to be finished. Then-_

 

CUTTER

Review of Case 182 concerning Subject 4272422 complete. Personal recordings have been edited and are ready for archive.

(pause)

Subject status: Terminated.

 

_The tape recorder clicks OFF._


End file.
